2 SIDES OF THE SAME HIGH-PROFIT STREET

I think it was Mario Puzo, author of "The Godfather" and
co-screenwriter on the three "Godfather" movies, who said his Corleone
crime family was just another version of American capitalism.

Think of the Mafia as an entrepreneurial enterprise doing what all
other business organizations do -- supply its customers with products
and services they want and need, grow market share, create new
business lines and ventures and, most importantly, make as big a
profit as possible.

Obviously, there's a difference between capitalism and organized
crime.

The latter supplies illegal goods and services, and it advances its
business interest through blackmail, extortion, violence and death.
They're mirrored images of each other. Much of the same stuff;
different sides of the street.

Or, one could look at organized crime another way: It's merely
unfettered capitalism, business done without annoying government laws,
rules, regulation and taxes.

These were some of the thoughts I had after seeing Ridley Scott's
epic-like crime and punishment drama, "American Gangster." Unlike its
"Godfather" predecessors, which focused on the family drama of the
Corleones, "Gangster" focuses on the business of making a fortune by
selling heroin in Harlem.

The film is based on a real person, Frank Lucas, who grew up dirt poor
in North Carolina and built a drug business so large and so successful
that eventually he had the Mafia working for him. Lucas applied the
first principle of capitalism: buy low, sell high.

He made his mark during the Vietnam era, the late '60s and '70s. He
figured out how to buy heroin from sources in Southeast Asia's "Golden
Triangle"; transport it to the U.S.A. in coffins of American GI's
killed in the war; and sell it throughout Harlem and beyond with his
own network of dealers. He bribed the American airmen who handled the
caskets and lots and lots of cops.

Soon enough, he was selling dope that was twice as good as the Mafia's
at half the price. The police were looking for Italian-American
mobsters, so it took years before they figured out they should look
for an African-American one. Another example of the uselessness of
racial profiling.

In the context of Harlem, Lucas was a character. Tall, handsome,
expensively dressed, he went to work everyday looking like the head of
a Wall Street brokerage, not some Super Fly pimp. The film portrays
him as a supremely disciplined leader, who rarely succumbs to
emotional or violent outbursts, unlike Tony Soprano's mob, which had
major impulse control problems.

As played by Denzel Washington, Lucas comes across cool, suave and
worthy of respect, if not admiration. You could regard him as a fine
example of an self-made American business man -- unless you know what
he did for a living.

His counterpoint in the film is narcotics detective, and later
prosecutor, Richie Roberts, also a real person. Roberts is as
informal, rough around the edges and intuitive as Lucas is formal,
smooth and judicious.

Roberts also is the oddest cop in the New York metropolitan area in
those years. He's an honest one. Early in the film, he finds almost a
million dollars in the trunk of a suspect's car. He turns in the
money, making him something of a despised figure among other police.

Roberts, given an earthy performance by Russell Crowe, is a good match
for Lucas. Both are disciplined, detail-oriented leaders, with a skill
for sniffing out opportunities. But it still takes ages for Roberts to
realize he's been searching for the wrong man behind the powerful new
heroin flooding Harlem.

The film likes to deal with some of the details of Lucas' business
sense.

His heroin comes in small glassine packets stamped with the brand name
"Blue Magic." He's outraged when he learns another dealer is selling
diluted heroin under the same name. This is "trademark infringement"
that damages his "brand."

As conservative columnist George Will pointed out in his column about
the movie, there's a message to this scene: "A drug kingpin can master
MBA-speak; the line between commerce and crime is blurry."

"American Gangster" tries to put Lucas in some historical
perspective.

He slips through the enlarging cracks in American society caused by
the Vietnam War, the greater tolerance of drugs, and urban decay,
which he made worse.

Randomly, director Scott inserts into the film shots of people
shooting up Lucas' heroin, or being killed by his dope. They may be
true, but they're extraneous to the story of Lucas' rise and fall.
It's as if a film touting a chemical company's great business success
interrupts itself with random shots of babies deformed by spills from
its factories, just to prove a secondary point.

But perhaps that is the point. George Will recalls a quote from Balzac:
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." And "American
Gangster"reminds us that Balzac's still correct, that capitalism and
criminality have much in common.